The document summarizes a study on how fans in the United States perceive the social media marketing strategy of Liverpool Football Club (LFC). A survey of 271 LFC supporters in the US found that most respondents can be classified as "minglers" who prefer discovering information on LFC's social media pages. There was no significant correlation found between respondents' level of interactivity on social media and their perception of LFC's interactivity. The study recommends that LFC improve engagement with US supporters by focusing on transforming "minglers" into advocates who spread positive word of mouth, and making content more relevant and interactive for the US market.

1. 1
How do Fans in
the U.S. Perceive a
Top Club’s Social
Media Marketing
Strategy?
A quantitative study
by Maral O’Brien
SocialMediaMarketingand
theEnglishPremierLeague

2. 2
Executive Summary………………………….…...Page 3
Study Rationale……………………………………..Page 4
Methodology…………………………………………Page 5
Findings and Recommendations…………….Page 6
References……………………………………………..Page 9
Table of Contents
 40.7% of respondents
follow @LFCUSA on
Twitter, while 35.8% do
not. The remaining 23.5%
do not use Twitter.
 50.6% of respondents were
aged between 25-34 .
 85.9% of respondents follow
LFC Official on Facebook.

3. 3
Modern sport is becoming increasingly globalised and
commercialised (Nash 2000). This has led to a change in the
business environment, in particular for football clubs (Kerr
and Emery 2011). Football clubs must recognise the need to
adapt to such an environment in order to retain competitive
advantage (McCarthy et al 2011). This report is based on a
Master’s dissertation, completed by the author in part
requirement for a degree in Sport Marketing from
Northumbria University, in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
The purpose of the study was to serve as a preliminary
investigation of user experiences with Liverpool Football
Club’s (LFC) social media marketing amongst its supporters in
the United States. Quantitative market research helped to
identify the challenges LFC should address to improve club
equity in a relationship marketing context. A questionnaire
based on relevant theoretical frameworks was administered
to individuals who identify as LFC supporters and claim
nationality from the U.S. (N=271). Data analysis resulted in
three key themes. Most of the sample can be categorised as
“minglers” on LFC social network sites and prefer to discover
information, rather than investigate or explore the club
through social media. A correlation discovered no significant
relationship between the level of the sample’s level
interactivity on SNS and their perceptions of LFC’s level of
interactivity. The research highlights the challenge for LFC to
improve its engagement with its supporters in the U.S.
Executive Summary

4. 4
The study was the first to quantitatively measure the
experiences of U.S. satellite supporters of an English football
club in an academic context. It serves as an important first
step in researching the social media experiences of this
sample group.
The best test of a team’s brand is how much cachet it
possesses outside of its own geographic region (Rifkin 1999).
When expanding into a foreign market, football clubs often
standardise their marketing strategies by replicating the same
segmentation, targeting, and positioning of their home
market (Bodet and Chanavat 2010). Therefore, marketing
strategies must be non-standardised because foreign fans
must be treated differently than local fans (Kerr 2009), and a
common way of reaching the foreign market is through social
media. With an estimated global fan base of 71 million
(Sport+Markt), LFC was chosen for this study due to its rich
history of success and status as a premier global brand.
Rationale

5. 5
To form the questionnaire, the researcher used academic frameworks and
examined LFC’s current social media practices. Firm-created SNS content
should be relevant, engaging, entertaining, informative and ‘share-worthy’
according to Halligan and Shah (2009). The questionnaire identified each
respondent’s SNS habits.
The research design:
 Quantitative
 Cross sectional
 12 question online survey hosted on Google Forms
 Open to respondents in the U.S. only, aged 18 or older.
Survey implementation:
 Survey first implemented on the first weekend of the EPL season.
 Survey open to respondents for 18 days
 Each of the 26 Official LFC Supporters branches in the U.S. were
contacted by email
 The survey was also circulated through social media: Facebook, Twitter,
and Google+
 A total of 443 respondents, with a final sample of 271 meeting the
inclusion criteria.
Methodology
Respondents were requested to
rate their level of agreement,
using a five point Likert scale
with questions such as; “I
investigate LFC Official on social
media before following any of its
accounts”

6. 6
Findings
Classifying LFC supporters on social media
How do supporters in the U.S. use LFC Official social media?
29%
12%47%
12%
Lurkers Newbys Minglers Evangeslists
Recommendations:
Social network users fit into one of four types on the “social network contrib-
utor ladder.” The data demonstrates that the two largest groups in the sam-
ple are “minglers” and the “lurkers.” The objective for LFC should be to trans-
form minglers into evangelists, and lurkers into newbys. LFC should focus on
evangelists as they are the type which is most likely to be a brand advocate.
Positive word of mouth marketing originating from evangelists is likely to
spread throughout the LFC brand community via SNS. Consequently, those
further down the ladder, such as the lurkers and newbys, may increase their
level of social contribution.
Adapted from Harridge-March & Quinton 2009
A pie chart analysis classifying respondents by
social network contributor type.

7. 7
Findings
What are LFC supporters opinions of LFC Official on social
media?
What does each social contributor type think of LFC Official?
Recommendations:
This analysis was based on the social media marketing theory that content should be interactive,
informative, entertaining, and be shared via word of mouth.
LFC should focus on improving the interactivity of their SNS content. The club could improve inter-
activity with its U.S. satellite supporters through increasing its relevancy to this market. As a sugges-
tion, more emphasis needs to be placed on @LFCUSA on Twitter. Content could involve posting kick
-off times in a U.S. time zone friendly format, or be related to U.S. pop culture and “memes.”
Additionally, the analysis shows that across all groups, there is a high level of word of mouth mar-
keting. LFC should seek ways in which to benefit from this finding. For instance, LFC could increase
its promotional activity on the photo sharing SNS, Instagram, by encouraging U.S. based supporters
to share, or “tag” their friends or fellow supporters.
A bar chart analysis representing each contributor type’s perception of LFC official.

8. 8
Findings
LFC Official and Interactivity
Do LFC supporters who interact with LFC on social media feel that the club is
reciprocating this interaction?
Correlations
[I interact with
Liverpool FC
Official social
media accounts
by commenting,
retweeting, etc.]
[I feel that Liver-
pool FC inter-
acts with me on
social media]
Spearman's rho [I interact with Liverpool FC
Official social media ac-
counts by commenting, re-
tweeting, etc.]
Correlation Coefficient 1.000 .299**
Sig. (2-tailed) . .000
N
271 271
[I feel that Liverpool FC in-
teracts with me on social
media]
Correlation Coefficient .299**
1.000
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .
N 271 271
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Recommendations:
There is a weak link between how strongly respondents agreed that Liverpool FC
is interactive on SNS, and how strongly respondents rated their own level of in-
teraction on SNS with LFC .
The findings suggest that the reciprocated interaction of LFC is not rated highly.
Therefore, a challenge exists for LFC to improve its interactivity on SNS. A way in
which sport organisations can address this is by investing in a specialist social
media team. The team would be involved in all aspects of social media strategy,
with an emphasis on creating interactive social media content for all internation-
al markets.
A Spearman’s correlation was produced to analyse the relationship between two of the study’s variables.

9. 9
References
Bodet, G., and Chanavat, N. (2010) ‘Building global football brand equity’,
Marketing and Logistics, 22(1), pp. 55-66.
Halligan, B., and Shah, D. (2009) Inbound Marketing. Hoboken: Wiley.
Harridge-March, S, and Quinton, S. (2009) ‘Virtual snakes and ladders: social
networks and the relationship marketing loyalty ladder’, The Marketing Re-
view, 9(2), pp. 171-181. Doi: 10.1362/146934709X442692
Kerr, A (2009). “You’ll never walk alone: the use of brand equity frameworks
to explore the team identification of the ‘satellite supporter.’” Available at:
https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/research/bitstream/handle/2100/887/
Whole02.pdf?sequence=2
Kerr, A. and Emery, P. (2011). ‘Foreign fandom and the Liverpool FC: a cyber-
mediated romance’, Soccer and Society, 12(6), pp. 880-896.
McCarthy, J., Pioch, E., Rowley, J., and Ashworth, C. (2011). ‘Social Network
sites and relationship marketing communications: challenges for UK football
clubs’, MindTrek ’11. DOI: 10.1145/2181037.2181061
Nash, R. (2000). Globalised Football Fandom: Scandinavian Liverpool FC
Supporters. Available at: http://www.doc4net.com/doc/2605745663180
(Accessed 12 September 2015).
Rifkin, G. (1999) ‘How the Boston Red Sox touch all the branding bases’,
Fourth Quarter, 4(17), pp. 75-83.

10. 10
This publication has been produced based on a Masters
dissertation submitted as part requirement of Masters of
Science degree in Sport Marketing at Northumbria
University.
Should you have any enquiries about this publication or
the dissertation project, please contact the author at:
Maral O’Brien
15 Furrow Lane
London
E9 6JS
or by email at: maral.obrien@gmail.com
Telephone: 0754 2224429